Twitter Employees Resigning

[daylatedollarshort]

Back in my work day, 80 hour, 7 day weeks were not uncommon. Having a (company paid) room at the hotel next door minimized my commute too. But, let's just say the rewards were very, very well worth it and one of the reasons I was able to RE.

People do retire without working 80 hours a week. It is not a prerequisite. Much of our retirement portfolio came from Adsense clicks while we were working, sleeping or playing Yahtzee.

I remember complaining about the workload at megacorp and my director's reply was do you know what bonuses are going to be this year, like all that was important in their life was money and not free time to exercise, eat healthy and maintain social connections.

 

[ERD50]

The info I gave is sufficient for someone interested to go look on electrek.co. It is not important enough for me to spend the time to look for it again.
....

No problem. But I did mention I did a search specific to that site (to improve signal/noise ratio), and I didn't find it. Maybe I used the wrong search terms, but I'm not finding it.

.... PS. I have not read much that Lambert wrote. On the other hand, I have seen plenty of Musk's presentation on technical stuff, and my doubt about his honesty carries over to his other proclamations.

Oh, I'm plenty skeptical of Musk. But I'm skeptical of pretty much everyone (What was the BB King line? "Nobody loves me but my Mother, and she may be jivin' too)."?

So I look for the source info, and see if I can come to any conclusion from there.

-ERD50

 

[ERD50]

Seems Musk isn't so free speechy once he has some skin in the game.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-suspends-accounts-several-journalists-2022-12-16/

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1143291081/twitter-suspends-journalists-elon-musk-jet

https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-suspends-accounts-of-several-journalists-11671165191

The other link works. And it's pretty much all over the internet so not too hard to find.

e.g. https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-suspends-accounts-several-journalists-2022-12-16/

What's your point? That link isn't about "free speech". You can't falsely yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater, that doesn't fall under "free speech".

That link is about people doxxing Musks' private minute-by-minute whereabouts, providing information for people who may want to harm him, take his kids hostage, etc. That's not allowed by Twitter rules (and applies to everyone), and I don't think information endangering others falls under "free speech".

There apparently was an attack on a car driven by one of Musk's drivers, so this isn't a hypothetical.

-ERD50

 

[marko]

No, I now make more money selling options, in less time and for more money, sitting at my breakfast table drinking coffee.

It's a beautiful thing, isn’t it!?

 

[NW-Bound]

OK, I am a nice guy, so I just looked up again that article that I stumbled across. It is dated Dec 12, 2022.

See: https://electrek.co/2022/12/12/tesl...-driving-computer-for-free-false-advertising/

We reported last week that Tesla tried to get the lawsuit dismissed by saying that “failure to realize a long-term, aspirational goal is not fraud.”

For those willing to go through the small claims system, Jordan’s approach might be a better short-term solution.

Interestingly, Jordan said that he used our article about the FSD subscription situation as evidence in the case in front of the judge. Funny enough, Tesla CEO Elon Musk blocked Electrek’s and my personal Twitter accounts after we posted that article.

We can’t confirm that it is the reason why we were blocked, but there was nothing else we posted around that time that could have triggered this.

 

[NW-Bound]

It's a beautiful thing, isn’t it!?

Not sure that it is a pretty sight, as I don't look like Steve McQueen whose look I fancy. Heck, I have dark hair and look nothing like him, but he was so cool.

Not beautiful, but fun, lucrative, and challenging. I still miss some real hardcore engineering work though, but darn I remember working so hard and not getting amply paid for it, it took the fun out of it.

A pat on the back or a medal is cheap and does not mean much. If you value my work, gimme money.

 

[ERD50]

OK, I am a nice guy, so I just looked up tagain that article that I stumbled across. It is dated Dec 12, 2022.

See: https://electrek.co/2022/12/12/tesl...-driving-computer-for-free-false-advertising/

OK, thanks - I had done another search, and still didn't find it - that was pretty far buried in the article.

Anyhow, I really wonder if there isn't more to that story. This "Jordan" is a customer, and maybe there is fine print in the FSD agreement against public comment? I dunno, that still kinda sucks, but if he signed it, it could be grounds for this action? If so, blame that on Tesla, it's not a Twitter "free speech" issue, at least as I see it.

-ERD50

 

[NW-Bound]

OK, thanks - I had done another search, and still didn't find it - that was pretty far buried in the article.

Anyhow, I really wonder if there isn't more to that story. This "Jordan" is a customer, and maybe there is fine print in the FSD agreement against public comment? I dunno, that still kinda sucks, but if he signed it, it could be grounds for this action? If so, blame that on Tesla, it's not a Twitter "free speech" issue, at least as I see it.

-ERD50

Jordan sued Tesla, and cited something Lambert wrote. As the result Lambert and Electrek got blocked.

I don't know if Jordan had a Twitter account, but it was Lambert, a 3rd party observer that got blocked.

And it was not Tesla that blocked Lambert, it was Twitter who did it (or rather Musk, to protect his interest in Tesla).

Do you think if Lambert said similar things about GM Cruise, or Waymo, or Mobileye that Musk would block it?

Looks like selective "Free Speech" to me.

 

[DJRR]

What's your point? That link isn't about "free speech". You can't falsely yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater, that doesn't fall under "free speech".

That link is about people doxxing Musks' private minute-by-minute whereabouts, providing information for people who may want to harm him, take his kids hostage, etc. That's not allowed by Twitter rules (and applies to everyone), and I don't think information endangering others falls under "free speech".

There apparently was an attack on a car driven by one of Musk's drivers, so this isn't a hypothetical.

-ERD50

Well to be fair:

1. That is the exact argument the previous owners made.
2. The account has been active for years and is based on public information. Elon could ask for the information to be restricted if he really cared.
3. It was not against the terms of service, until Elon randomly changed them. The same thing he accuses the past owners of.
4. We don't know if anything actually happened. No police report. Anyway, it was a car, not a plane.
5. Elon did the same thing by posting a picture of a man and asking Twitter users to dox him. Supposedly the perp I guess.
6. Elon cancelled several reporter accounts who accurately reported on the incident and who he believes do negative stories on Twitter.

Which is all to say that he is a hypocrite. Not surprising, but lame to whine about the platform when you disagree with the decisions and then proceed to make similar decisions with even less accountability and transparency. Look for significant fines from the EU.

He has had to sell more Tesla after saying he wouldn't in order to make his cash flow/interest payments. He is losing advertisers, not paying his rent, and supposedly has $100 billion in loans secured by Tesla that will have a margin call if it goes below ~ $130 per share. Take that with a grain of salt, but potentially a self-reinforcing cycle of sales that will hurt Tesla badly as well.

 

[Gumby]

Let me say, first, that I have no dog in this fight. I neither like nor dislike Elon Musk, nor do I have a Twitter account, and I certainly do not follow the ins and outs of this dispute. But certain things that have been said on this thread lead me to this attempt to at least establish some basic facts:

1. Freedom of Speech - many people assume the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees them the right to say anything they want about any subject at any time without consequence. They are wrong. Here is the text of that Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

You will note that it binds only Congress, not anyone else, and especially not private parties. The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that this applied to state and local governments via the 14th Amendment. See Gitlow v. New York 268 U.S. 652 (1925). The court has held that there can be narrowly tailored, content neutral, restrictions on time, place and manner. What that means in practice is that the government, with rare exceptions (shouting fire in a crowded theater, inciting a riot e.g.) cannot prohibit you from speaking and cannot punish you for speaking. However, private parties unconnected to the government are not bound by the First Amendment, which leads to my second point:

2. Speech without Consequence - while the First Amendment may prohibit the government from barring your speech or punishing you for it, that does not mean that you can speak without consequence, because private parties are not bound by that amendment. Thus, a privately owned website can delete your posts or terminate your account. Absent a union contract or the like, you can be fired from your job for the things you say. You can be kicked out of your country club or your church. Potential customers and suppliers can boycott you. If you say false things that harm others, you can be sued for defamation, tortious interference with contractual benefits, or something similar. You can be sued for violation of copyright or trademark if applicable.

So, while Elon Musk may or may not be a hypocrite and may or may not be acting fairly toward Twitter users, the U.S. Constitution is, more likely than not, of no help to those who disagree with him.

 

[bigreader]

Gumby, one small observation. The government isn't necessarily able to regulate "shouting fire in a crowded theater." The "crowded theater" language comes from a wrongly decided case whose reasoning was superseded by Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). Brandenburg uses a two-pronged test. Speech can be prohibited if it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action." This is a fun little article that makes this point better than I have here. https://www.theatlantic.com/nationa...g-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/

The larger point is, as you noted, the First Amendment applies only to the government and, second, even then the government has a very limited ability to regulate speech. Musk bought Twitter. It is a private company and he can alone decide (at least in the US) the rules of engagement. He can add or ban whomever he wants. At the same time, he doesn't get to demand that advertisers, users and employees accept those rules. Nor does he have an excuse for failing to pay landlords, vendors and employees; ignoring labor laws; and blowing off consent decrees and contractual obligations.

BR

 

[NW-Bound]

So, while Elon Musk may or may not be a hypocrite and may or may not be acting fairly toward Twitter users, the U.S. Constitution is, more likely than not, of no help to those who disagree with him.

By now, people reading this forum know that I detest lies put forth by people to sell products. And there are laws against false advertising, I believe.

I have not been too involved in disputes concerning free speech regarding political matters on Twitter with the prior owner and the current one, but just want to point out the hypocrisy about "selective free speech".

I agree that a private enterprise can choose to voice its opinion, but as you said, people who disagree with it can choose not to engage in business with it. The Constitution does not help either side here.

I don't think anybody here in this forum talks of applying the First Amendment in this dispute. It's all about whether to engage with a private enterprise or not depending on what you perceive of its honesty, before and after the buyout.

 

[punkinhead]

What's your point? That link isn't about "free speech". You can't falsely yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater, that doesn't fall under "free speech".

That link is about people doxxing Musks' private minute-by-minute whereabouts, providing information for people who may want to harm him, take his kids hostage, etc. That's not allowed by Twitter rules (and applies to everyone), and I don't think information endangering others falls under "free speech".

There apparently was an attack on a car driven by one of Musk's drivers, so this isn't a hypothetical.

Jet tracking is 100% public and easily available on sites like Flightaware.com and adsbexchange.com. My wife regularly tracks flights of a plane we sold last summer. There's NO claim or evidence in those articles that anyone is providing realtime location when he's driving and I've found nothing to indicate the "attack" is real or that the alleged attacker got location information from a journalist's tweet. All evidence points to Musk booting journalists who are critical of him. If journalists were actually doxxing him or anyone else I would agree with the banning, but there's no evidence that's happened.

 

[CaptTom]

...demanding long work hours by deploying sticks instead of carrots is a big no-no to me. We are not talking about soldiers defending their country here. We are talking about making someone else richer. Hah!

I think this is the crux of the issue. When you're trying to change the world by disrupting the auto industry with electric vehicles, or building rockets to go to Mars, it's easy to motivate people to commit all their waking hours to "the cause," regardless of compensation.


I'm not sure you can do the same at a social media platform. He's clearly trying to use the "free speech" banner for motivation. But to any thinking person it sort of rings hollow, as we've seen in some very thoughtful threads here. Hard-working, deep-thinking people can build a great rocket, but they're unlikely to support Musk's unfocused and ever-changing goals at Twitter.


Maybe his "move fast and break things" approach will work in the end. He might just stumble onto something which works. Given the amount of money at risk, I wouldn't bet on it. But a lot of people bet against Tesla and SpaceX when they were close to bankruptcy, so I won't say there's no chance.

 

[NW-Bound]

I only learned about this latest fiasco about journalists and Twitter from other sources, and picked up a new word: "doxxing". As I have said, I don't get out much.

I wonder why people or enterprises even bother with Twitter now. I guess they still use Twitter to broadcast their opinion, in which case Twitter is still a relevant media outlet. Or do people go there to see for themselves what's going on, like people gawking at a traffic accident?

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

Tesla stock down 55% - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-shares-down-55-buy-191707500.html

"Elon is selling his Tesla shares to help prop up Twitter - Elon Musk is turning once again to his Tesla stock to fund his Twitter habit — and investors are getting frustrated.

Why it matters: The precipitous drop in Tesla's stock price illustrates the real-world consequences of Musk's decision to acquire Twitter, and then disrupt the company's operations, scaring off advertisers.

I'm not a current or past owner of Tesla (stock or vehicle), nor do I plan on buying the stock any time soon (I think it as well as many other companies are still overpriced).

However, many tech stocks are down sharply from their peaks, not just $TSLA, and it (Tesla) is still up 5.5X or so in the last 5 years. I'd take that as a decent return.

One more data point: Amazon dropped about 95% from its dot com peak to its post dot com low. It turned out to be a decent buy given it is over 15X from its dot com peak and even better 300X+ from its post dot com low, and thankfully Bezos kept at it.

You can quote articles all you want, but need to realize that many of those articles are pushing a narrative.

As I said, I have no economic horse in this race, but do believe we have a serious problem in terms of restrictions on speech, bias of media, and lack of privacy in society. I hope for all of us that Musk is successful in improving the tweet bird and making it a true public square.

 

[jim584672]

If people don't like how a forum is moderated they can start their own forum. It isn't a free speech issue at all.

Elon is an ass. He is treating TSLA like his personal ATM to cover for his terrible business decisions. I hope people start boycotting his crappy overpriced cars.

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

If people don't like how a forum is moderated they can start their own forum. It isn't a free speech issue at all.

Elon is an ass. He is treating TSLA like his personal ATM to cover for his terrible business decisions. I hope people start boycotting his crappy overpriced cars.

Dude, it's his personal stock, not TSLA's. He (Musk) still owns 423 million shares of Tesla and has options on 279 million shares. Just the option shares are worth $39 billion after exercise.

People really aren't rational.

As I stated, I don't own the stock, don't own the vehicle. But it sure seems that there are folks here (and in many other places) who want bad things to happen because they don't like someone's perceived political views.

What is most "funny" about this is the same folks who were saying "Twitter is a private company, they can do whatever they want" are sure upset now that Musk is doing things that they don't like.

Bits are bits. Would it be OK for AT&T to inspect and prevent SMS (text) messages between you and your friend because some unknown group at AT&T doesn't like what you texted? How about phone calls -after all, they are now digital...so can they also be censured and blocked? After all, Verizon is a private company so there is no first amendment protection?

The world is a changing place due to technology, and as someone who was part of the creation of it, I am very concerned about collusion between government and mega-tech and the loss of individual freedoms.

 

[JoeWras]

What is most "funny" about this is the same folks who were saying "Twitter is a private company, they can do whatever they want" are sure upset now that Musk is doing things that they don't like.

Yep. His cars used to be gold when it was all about saving the planet.

Now they are dung.

Amazing.

 

[bobandsherry]

Seems Musk isn't so free speechy once he has some skin in the game.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-suspends-accounts-several-journalists-2022-12-16/

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1143291081/twitter-suspends-journalists-elon-musk-jet

https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-suspends-accounts-of-several-journalists-11671165191

He's free speech for HIM.

 

[punkinhead]

Bits are bits. Would it be OK for AT&T to inspect and prevent SMS (text) messages between you and your friend because some unknown group at AT&T doesn't like what you texted?

That's exactly what Musk is doing now and his predecessor did before he bought it. They just happen to be banning different people.

 

[DJRR]

I don't think anybody here in this forum talks of applying the First Amendment in this dispute. It's all about whether to engage with a private enterprise or not depending on what you perceive of its honesty, before and after the buyout.

I think that is my point. Everyone is biased, to think otherwise is to be naive. No one is complaining about free speech or clamoring for Fox news to parrot Democratic talking points or puff stories about Republican failures. Musk just has a different bias.

There is some argument to be had for the "Main Stream Media" to be reflective of the entire country, which is why we had the FCC Fairness Doctrine. For better or worse that ship has sailed in this country. Europe still has more government restrictions on speech and especially privacy, and I am sure others do too.

I personally draw the line between bias, choosing which stories to present and how to present them, and fabrication, totally making things up like election fraud or drinking childrens blood to stay young.

I am disheartened that a major news organization like Fox would argue in court that no reasonable person would believe their commentators or that lawyers representing a sitting President/party would argue in court that a fraud occurred that was so successful that it left no discernible evidence. These types of fabrications fray the very fabric of the nation and humans are ill equipped to deal with it. If someone like me, with a classic liberal arts education, graduate level research skills, understanding of statistics, and an interest in the topics has a hard/impossible time separating truth from fiction then I fear the average person just ignores it all and hopes it works out. That leaves the "true believers", who are willing to say/do anything for the cause, in charge.

From an investing perspective it seems clear that Musk overpaid for an asset that does not make any money. The current rise in the risk free rate crushes any future projections and someone smart, like KKR, would never recommend an LBO on a company with weak cash flow in a high interest environment. Maybe he will take it public for $100B in the next cycle, but I would not bet my money on that. He is also bleeding into TSLA, which has fallen ~ 35% since the buyout. The PE there is still 4x the industry average, so a long way to go down if sentiment turns. It may not be fair, but when something is priced for perfection the combination of increased rates, increased selling pressure from Elon's sales, and perceived distraction/instability of the major shareholder can lead to a lot of pain. I am sure I own a huge chunk in my index funds, so not excited to see it happen.

 

[braumeister]

Thanks for the interesting discussion.